More about RSS

What is RSS?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a method of publishing headlines, links, and article summaries that appear on Web sites. By using a special news reader, you can subscribe to news "feeds" of particular interest and be notified when new content becomes available on a Web site.

How is RSS different from regular Web browsing?

RSS allows you to focus on topics and articles that are most interesting to you. You can read article introductions or summaries before clicking through to a Web page, which allows you to make the most of your browsing time.

RSS readers can also alert you when content has been added to the Web sites you have subscribed to, much like how e-mail readers notify you when a new message arrives.

RSS readers have also been created as extensions of browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, a free Web browser which is available for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX computers. The Sage RSS reader for Firefox can be downloaded from the Firefox Web site.

What are the other uses for RSS?

If you maintain a Web page, you can set your page up so that it is automatically updated by an RSS feed originating on another computer. You can use RSS to share content automatically between several computer systems and Web sites. For example, U of L Web authors can use our news RSS feeds to add U of L news to their department Web sites.

How do I subscribe to U of L RSS feeds?

The exact procedure will vary depending upon the RSS reader you're using. In general, you'll follow one of the links listed on the RSS feeds page, which will bring you to a summary of recent U of L news content.

Once you're looking at a feed of interest, you can copy the URL, paste it into your RSS reader, and hit "Subscribe." For browser-based RSS readers, you can subscribe by adding the news RSS feed to a special folder in your bookmarks.